Mercury Overview Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Mercury is far denser, however, having a metallic core that takes up about 61 percent of its volume . Moreover, its surface shows significant differences from lunar terrain, including a lack of the massive dark-coloured lava flows known as maria and the presence of buckles and scarps that suggest Mercury is shrinking. Hermes, the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Mercury, when it appeared as an evening star just after sunset. Hermes was the swift messenger of the gods, and the planet’s name is thus likely a reference to its rapid motions relative to other objects in the sky. Even in more recent eras, many sky observers passed their entire lifetimes without ever seeing Mercury.

Britannica Explains In these videos, Britannica explains a variety of topics and answers frequently asked questions. Please be sure Javascript and external scripts are enabled and try again. Customers and partners choose Mercury based on the advantage they derive from our products, solutions, trusted relationship and experience. The rover will abrade a rock this week, allowing scientists and engineers to decide whether that target would withstand its powerful drill. The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study three big quakes. Caltech researchers used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to determine that surface water left salt minerals behind as recently as 2 billion years ago.

This would indicate an interaction between the magnetosphere and the planet’s surface. A notable basin is the 400 km wide, multi-ring Tolstoj Basin that has an ejecta blanket extending up to 500 km from its rim and a floor that has been filled by smooth plains materials. Beethoven Basin has a similar-sized ejecta blanket and a 625 km diameter rim. Like the Moon, the surface of https://cryptolisting.org/ has likely incurred the effects of space weathering processes, including solar wind and micrometeorite impacts. Until the last part of the 20th century, Mercury was one of the least-understood planets, and even now the shortage of information about it leaves many basic questions unsettled.

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The mines in Almadén , Monte Amiata , and Idrija dominated mercury production from the opening of the mine in Almadén 2500 years ago, until new deposits were found at the end of the 19th century. Like the English name quicksilver (“living-silver”), this name was due to mercury’s liquid and shiny properties. Mercury embrittlement is the most common type of liquid metal embrittlement. Compared to other metals, it is a poor conductor of heat, but a fair conductor of electricity. An old pound coin (density ~7.6 g/cm3) floats on mercury due to the combination of the buoyant force and surface tension.

Although it was widely speculated that this mercury-based preservative could cause or trigger autism in children, scientific studies showed no evidence supporting any such link. Nevertheless, thiomersal has been removed from, or reduced to trace amounts in all U.S. vaccines recommended for children 6 years of age and under, with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine. A newspaper claimed that an unidentified European Union directive calling for energy-efficient lightbulbs to be made mandatory by 2012 encouraged China to re-open cinnabar mines to obtain the mercury required for CFL bulb manufacture. Environmental dangers have been a concern, particularly in the southern cities of Foshan and Guangzhou, and in Guizhou province in the southwest.

Today, the use of mercury in medicine has greatly declined in all respects, especially in developed countries. Thermometers and sphygmomanometers containing mercury were invented in the early 18th and late 19th centuries, respectively. In the early 21st century, their use is declining and has been banned in some countries, states and medical institutions. Senate passed legislation to phase out the sale of non-prescription mercury thermometers.

Moonless

At the antipode of the Caloris Basin is a large region of unusual, hilly terrain known as the “Weird Terrain”. One hypothesis for its origin is that shock waves generated during the Caloris impact traveled around Mercury, converging at the basin’s antipode . Alternatively, it has been suggested that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin’s antipode. Mercury is a contemporary mid-century cocktail lounge, serving late-night food with an extensive selection of wine.

When proper safety precautions are taken to prevent inadvertently pointing the telescope at the Sun , Mercury can be viewed as close as 4° to the Sun when near superior conjunction when it is almost at its brightest. Mercury’s orbit is inclined by 7 degrees to the plane of Earth’s orbit , the largest of all eight known solar planets. As a result, transits of Mercury across the face of the Sun can only occur when the planet is crossing the plane of the ecliptic at the time it lies between Earth and the Sun, which is in May or November. And MESSENGER space probes have indicated that the strength and shape of the magnetic field are stable.

This made close observation of both sides of the planet impossible, and resulted in the mapping of less than 45% of the planet’s surface. A rare event in astronomy is the passage of one planet in front of another , as seen from Earth. Mercury and Venus occult each other every few centuries, and the event of May 28, 1737 is the only one historically observed, having been seen by John Bevis at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

Mariner 10’s First Image of Mercury

The mercury-containing organohalide merbromin is still widely used but has been banned in some countries such as the U.S. Gaseous mercury is used in mercury-vapor lamps and some “neon sign” type advertising signs and fluorescent lamps. Those low-pressure lamps emit very spectrally narrow lines, which are traditionally used in optical spectroscopy for calibration of spectral position.

• Since the amalgam destroys the aluminium oxide layer which protects metallic aluminium from oxidizing in-depth , even small amounts of mercury can seriously corrode aluminium.
• It is used in some liquid-in-glass thermometers, especially those used to measure high temperatures.
• Sodium, potassium and calcium were discovered in the atmosphere during the 1980–1990s, and are thought to result primarily from the vaporization of surface rock struck by micrometeorite impacts including presently from Comet Encke.
• Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system – traveling through space at nearly 29 miles per second.
• Historically, one of the largest releases was from the Colex plant, a lithium isotope separation plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Falls Church, VA-based health-tech company careviso, led by Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Mignatti, raised a $17.4M Series B. The round was led by Ballast Point Ventures with participation from existing investors What is Mercury and Lytical Ventures. Mercury Racing Propellers offer the ultimate in performance and durability. Our propeller artisans handcraft each prop into precision tuned works of art. Mercury is sometimes represented as holding a purse, symbolic of his business functions.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Each hypothesis predicts a different surface composition, and two space missions have been tasked with making observations of this composition. BepiColombo, which will arrive at Mercury in 2025, will make observations to test these hypotheses. The findings so far would seem to favor the third hypothesis; however, further analysis of the data is needed. Flew by in 1974 and 1975; and MESSENGER, launched in 2004, orbited Mercury over 4,000 times in four years before exhausting its fuel and crashing into the planet’s surface on April 30, 2015. The BepiColombo spacecraft is planned to arrive at Mercury in 2025.

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Early in the Solar System’s history, Mercury may have been struck by a planetesimal of approximately 1/6 Mercury’s mass and several thousand kilometers across. The impact would have stripped away much of the original crust and mantle, leaving the core behind as a relatively major component. A similar process, known as the giant impact hypothesis, has been proposed to explain the formation of the Moon. Its orbital eccentricity is the largest of all known planets in the Solar System; at perihelion, Mercury’s distance from the Sun is only about two-thirds (or 66%) of its distance at aphelion.

Mercury chloride was once used to treat syphilis , although it is so toxic that sometimes the symptoms of its toxicity were confused with those of the syphilis it was believed to treat. Blue mass, a pill or syrup in which mercury is the main ingredient, was prescribed throughout the 19th century for numerous conditions including constipation, depression, child-bearing and toothaches. In the early 20th century, mercury was administered to children yearly as a laxative and dewormer, and it was used in teething powders for infants.

In one small study including 11 construction workers exposed to elemental mercury, patients were treated with DMSA and NAP. Chelation therapy with both drugs resulted in the mobilization of a small fraction of the total estimated body mercury. DMSA was able to increase the excretion of mercury to a greater extent than NAP. The three largest point sources for mercury emissions in the U.S. are the three largest gold mines. Hydrogeochemical release of mercury from gold-mine tailings has been accounted as a significant source of atmospheric mercury in eastern Canada. Mercury and most of its compounds are extremely toxic and must be handled with care; in cases of spills involving mercury , specific cleaning procedures are used to avoid exposure and contain the spill.

Such liquid-mirror telescopes are cheaper than conventional large mirror telescopes by up to a factor of 100, but the mirror cannot be tilted and always points straight up. Organic mercury compounds are historically important but are of little industrial value in the western world. Mercury salts are a rare example of simple metal complexes that react directly with aromatic rings. Organomercury compounds are always divalent and usually two-coordinate and linear geometry. Unlike organocadmium and organozinc compounds, organomercury compounds do not react with water.